A guide to modern cookery

if the flour were not sifted. 183—HERB JUICE This is to finish or intensify certain preparations. To prepare it, throw into a small saucepan of boiling water some parsley, chervil, and tarragon and chive leaves, in equal quantities, according to the amount of juice required. Set to boil for two minutes, drain, cool, press the herbs in a towel, twisting the latter; pound very finely, and extract the juice from the resulting paste by twisting a strong towel round it. Keep this juice in the cool. 184—BREAD-CRUMBS Thoroughly rub, in a closed towel, some stale bread-crumb previously well broken up. Pass it through a fine sieve or colander, according as to whether it is required very fine or not, and put it aside in a convenient receptacle. 185—CHOPPED ONION Cut the onion finely, like the shallots, but if it is to be minced with a view to making it even finer, it should be freed of its pungent juice, which would cause it to blacken with exposure to the air. To accomplish this, put the onion in the corner of a towel, pour plenty of cold water over it, and twist the towel in order to express the water. By this means the onion remains quite white. 186—TURNED OR STONED OLIVES There are special instruments for stoning olives, but, failing these, cut the fruit spirally from the stone with the point of a small knife. Keep the olives in slightly salted water. 187—PARSLEY _Chopped Parsley._—If parsley be properly chopped, no juice should be produced. If, on the contrary, the operation be performed badly, it amounts to a process of pounding which, perforce, expresses the juice. In the latter case the particles cohere, and they are sprinkled with difficulty over an object. To remedy this shortcoming, wash the choppings in fresh water, as in the case of the onion, pressing in a similar manner so as to expel the water. _Concassed Parsley_ is that kind which is roughly chopped. When a culinary preparation is dressed with _concassed_ parsley, the latter should be added to it a few moments before serving, in